Tuesday, 26 February 2013

I went in
there with my head held high, sat in the chair they indicated to me, crossed my
legs and lit a cigarette.I did not want
to honor them by over dressing for the occasion so I wore a safari suit.I was annoyed when I could not find my cravat
and incandescent when I found that the dog had chewed the belt for the jacket
but then decided that the open necked loose fitting blouse approach was
probably best.

I don’t
know if any of you read Ursula’s blog.I’d be surprised because she is barking mad.I really would like to leave a remark or two
on her blog occasionally but I am so often left dumbfounded.Without the faintest idea what she is on
about, it is hard to formulate a comment.

When I returned from the kangaroo court, I discovered
a load of emails and several comments left on my blog post wishing me luck and
giving me advice.The venue was changed
at the last minute but I still decided to perambulate through the neighborhood
rather than drive.Marcia would easily
be able to survive an impounded husband but an impounded truck would definitely
affect the bottom line.The last piece
of advice I saw before I left was from Sir Owl of The Wood.He suggested I armed myself with
ashtrays.Clearly he has recognized
these as my weapon of choice.Sadly,
although the pockets of a Safari Jacket are capacious enough for several, I
have but one ashtray and that had been impounded as evidence.Besides, they would have ruined the lines of
the suit.

Ursula’s
advice, which I only read after the event, was to leave my joke book
behind.This I had done as I was under no
illusion what might become of me if the decision went the wrong way.Although this was a community court it’s
decision, should they determine I was guilty of attempted murder, would leave
the police with no option but to bang me up and investigate and that could take
years.

This isn’t
the first time I have had a brush with the Angolan legal system.I first met Dominic’s mother in 1995.In order to get about a country busy bashing
itself to death I used UN light aircraft.To get a seat, I had to book in at the UN Flight Section of the World
Food Program.She worked there and I
couldn’t help but notice her.It
appeared that she and her female colleagues also noticed me.In fact it was her friend who had the real
crush on me but as it so often works out in these situations the one who really
fancied me, missed out. In those days I was still fit and slim and dressed in
jeans.Jeans shirt, jeans jacket and, of
course trousers.In the bush jeans are
easy to wash in a river, robust, dry out quickly and don’t need ironing.Everything I owned was carried in a small
rucksack slung over my shoulder.Whereas
everyone else calling in to the Flight Section arrived in air-conditioned
Landcruisers, I pitched up without a helmet on an old Ural motorcycle which eventually,
as I was a frequent traveller to all the hot-spots, I was allowed to park in
the hangar so it was waiting for me when and if I got back.The girls called me the ‘Old Hippie’.

These were
light aircraft so I was only allowed 10 kgs of baggage.Most of the passengers were self-important UN
officials from Geneva or New York so they would argue furiously about such a
feeble baggage allowance.After all, in
the resolution of all the world’s conflicts, these people were impotent important.So it was no use asking them if they would take a package and deliver it
to some poor bastard employee of theirs who had been months in the thick of it
and really needed a Red Cross parcel.Since the heaviest item in my kit was only ever a bottle of whisky, I
was always happy to oblige and once they realized that I didn’t just dump the
parcel at the arrival airfield and presume it would somehow find its way to its
intended recipient, I tracked the person down and delivered it myself, I became
a regular courier, made a lot of new friends, and got myself a beautiful
girlfriend who would be the mother of my first child..

I felt
sorry for the fact she had to walk from home to the nearest UN bus stop so as
we were by then a bit of an item, I offered to buy her a second hand car.She went for a reasonably priced Nissan
Blebird which looked in good nick.

A few
months later, she asked me if she could sell it as she had enough saved up to
buy a 4x4.We weren’t married, it was
her car as far as I was concerned, she could do what she liked.What I didn’t realize though, was that she
sold the car to a colleague at work on the ‘Never-Never’.She broke two fundamental laws regarding used
cars here.Firstly, only ever sell them
for cash on the nail, Caveat Emptor.Second, never sell a used car to a friend.

Three
months later she confessed to me that while the guy had paid a two grand
deposit, he had not made a single payment to service the outstanding six grand
debt.

‘Well go
and see your boss then’, I said.

‘I did but
he said it was not a matter for the UN and that the UN could not get involved
in local issues.’

What the
hell did she expect me to do, stick my Makarov in his face?I told her to stick a complaint against in at
her office and get a lawyer to write a letter to him saying he either coughs up
or gives her the car back.He actually
had the audacity to come and create a fuss at my place of work.I told him to fuck off.A couple of months later, he gave her the car
back.In bits.

‘Just put
it down to experience’, I told her.It
had already cost over 500 bucks in lawyer’s letters.Imagine how much it would cost, and how long
it would take, to get him to court.And
to what end?The court, unable to fathom
the ‘He said, ‘She said’ shit would just say, ‘Put it down to experience’.I know it rankles but sometimes it really is
better just to walk away, a little poorer perhaps, but a heck of a lot
poorer.I tried to explain to her what a
Pyrrhic Victory was but I don’t think it helped her sleep any better.I couldn’t see why she was so hot and
bothered, it was my money after all and I had, by now, bought her a brand new
RAV 4.

We were
married, finally moved into a decent house in one of the smarter neighborhoods
of Luanda and she fell pregnant with Dominic.I flew down to Cape Town, bought a nice house in Constantia overlooking
the vineyards, put my step-daughter into St Cyprian’s, employed a Gentleman to
drive her around in the Mercedes I had bought her and returned to Angola to
work.In due course she gave birth to
Dominic in the Constantiaberg clinic.I
had flown her mother and my mother down there for the event and she thanked me
my being late to pup.Have you any idea
what it was like for me living in the same house as my mother AND my
mother-in-law?

So there I
was, back in Angola, family safely tucked up in Cape Town when the house guard told
me there were some gentlemen in the street who wanted to talk to me.

‘Invite
them in’, I said.

They issued
me with a Summons.My wife AND I, were
jointly charged with fraud, a crime carrying ten years in gaol if
convicted.To say I was confused would
be an understatement worthy of a man whose Sang was so Froid, there were
icebergs in his arteries.Then they
arrested me because I had failed to answer two previous summonses.I pointed out that I had never received
either of the first two summonses.They had
no answer for that neither could they tell me what it was all about, they had
only been instructed to find and fetch me.They took me to the same police station where, a year before I had as
part of my duty as a foreigner living in Angola been obliged to register
myself.

I must have
Irish blood in me because with the luck of the Irish, it was the same Chief
Inspector who had almost fallen off his seat backwards when I walked into his
police station a year before saying that in accordance with Angolan law, I
needed to register at the police station responsible for the suburb in which I
lived.‘No foreigner EVER does that!’ he
had said at the time.I formally signed
the summonses, received my copy and instead of being banged up, was allowed to
leave.

My wife was
in Cape Town suckling my only son so she wasn’t around to help me.I asked my boss if I could go and see the
Angolan lawyers my employers had on retainer.

‘This is
very serious,’ they informed me with due (and expensive gravitas), ‘You are
looking at ten years if convicted’.

‘But what
have I done?’ I asked.

‘We’ll need
to make an application to the Criminal Court.In the meantime, you will need to deposit US$2,000 in cash at our
offices no later than tomorrow morning.You did the right thing to come and see us’.Lawyers ALWAYS say that, don’t they?I didn’t even get a cup of coffee.

A week
later, remarkable only for my lack of sleep, they came into the office, called
my boss and had a meeting.So much for
client confidentiality, after all, my employer’s weren’t paying the bills in
this case.Ignoring me completely they
informed my boss that a year before I joined his company, I had committed
fraud.I had ignored two summonses and
had now been arrested, cautioned to appear, and been released.My boss, one of the sharpest tools in the box
and the best administrator I had ever seen looked at me.

‘I haven’t
a fucking clue what it is about!’ I protested and then, somewhat wimpishly
added, ‘Honest!’

‘What are
the charges?’ my boss asked quietly of the lawyers.

‘Fraud!’
they exclaimed in unison, ‘Ten years in jail!’

I don’t
think it was an icy stare he gave them (I couldn’t really see as I had averted
my eyes from him and had fixed my gaze on the lawyers such was my eagerness to
know why my life was suddenly crashing around me).An icy stare would have frozen them to the
spot.I think he gave them the briefest
glimpse of the fiery hell that awaited them if they continued to jerk him
around.

‘WhatDidHeDo?’

‘He sold a
car with the wrong engine in it’.One of
them confessed hurriedly.

‘I see’,
replied my boss.‘Thomas?’

‘I still
haven’t a clue what they are on about!I
have never even owned a car here much less sold one…I have only ever bought cars for my wife…
hang on a sec…What car are they talking
about?’

It was the
Nissan Bluebird.

Once I got
a glimpse of all the court documents that I had paid $2,000 for, I could see
the timeline.Immediately AFTER my wife
left the UN and started the new job I had arranged for her with a drilling
company the manager of which just happened to be an old motorcycle racing pal
of mine this git had initiated court
proceedings against her listing her address as Care Of the UN.For good measure, even though he knew at the
time I was still only her boyfriend, he had thrown my name into the melting pot
as well.Having failed to answer two
wrongly delivered summonses, I was already guilty as hell.The argument was that I had sold the
plaintiff a Nissan Bluebird that actually had a Nissan Stanza engine
fitted.A Nissan Stanza is the hatch
back version of the four door Bluebird.As far as I was concerned, the engines and drive train were the same.

C

orruption
is rife here.It is not a question of
the law; it is a question of either who you know or how much money you
have.Blessed with both, some people get
away with murder.

I had none
of the former and very little of the latter.

The lawyers
suggested a plea bargain.We would
confess to the crime, pay compensation and spend no more than six months in
jail.I sacked them.

First thing
I had to do was track the car down and pray that it had not been overmolested.At the time of the War Over the Car, I had
been working for a provider of ‘hard’ security services which was why back then
I had a Makarov I was licensed to use and was increasingly regretting not
having done so.When the car came back
all stuffed up I had given it to my side kick, a police inspector assigned to
me so that if in the course of my duties I shot anyone he could write the
report and everything would be OK. His reports always made brilliant
reading.I was still learning Portuguese
at the time so I had to ask him why he started them all off with ‘Era uma
vez…’Apparently that is Portuguese for
‘Once Upon a Time’.I had also given him all the car documentation
and had no copies.

Having
retrieved copies of the documentation, having physically confirmed the chassis
and engine numbers matched the documentation I went to Nissan Angola and asked
them if they could confirm that there was no difference between a Bluebird and
a Stanza engine.They told me that of
course there was.Bluebird engines are
fitted to Bluebirds and Stanza’s to Stanzas.

I rang my
brother in Germany.

‘I’m facing
ten years in nick for fraud’

‘Only ten
years?’ he asked, ‘can’t have been worth the effort, especially if you can’t
even get away with it’

Within 24
hours, courtesy of Nissan Germany he had the complete build sheet for the
car.The engine fitted to this
particular Bluebird was the one it left the factory in Japan with.

Let us
forget the fact I still hadn’t got a lawyer and the court appearance date was
already peering over the horizon; I had another, far more serious problem.My wife.

She had
also been summoned.If all this went
badly wrong, she also faced time inside.I had sent her to Cape Town, setting her up nicely so that my son could
be born in a decent clinic (and good job too, she was in labour for eight hours
and it turned out the umbilical cord was wrapped around Dominic’s neck) and
grow strong in a civilized environment well stocked with nutritional kit from
South African supermarkets the shelves of which were groaning under the weight
of healthy produce the likes of which the Angolans were not to see for over
another ten years).I was slow off the
mark reproducing.When Dominic was born,
I was already forty years old and mildly surprised that my tackle still worked.The thought of my son having to be handed
over to a wet nurse or do time inside an Angolan jail with his convicted mother
made me sick.

I could
have just bolted.I had a house in Cape
Town, we were all nicely set up and, given my line of work, I would have
quickly been able to arrange another well-paying job anywhere in the world
except Angola.They had confiscated my
passport but, let’s face it, the lack of one is hardly an impediment to
international travel for the determined.Especially in Africa where they are too dim to realize that most
international businessmen have more than one and a few hundred bucks in cash at
immigration on your way out deals with the lack of an entry visa.At one stage I had three passports.Two of them were in my name.But even without a single passport, I could
easily have pitched up on my Cape Town doorstep.

Running,
though, was not the answer.I had to
clear the family name.She was my wife
and now with a son, they were my family so, for better or worse, I would stand
by them.They were Angolan.My entire wife’s family was in Angola.She should suddenly become a fugitive, stateless,
unable to return to her home? There was no way I was going to allow them into
the clutches of the Angolan authorities.Trouble was, I hadn’t got a fucking clue what to do and the clock was
ticking.

While all
this was going on I still had a job to do.I was pissed off with the standard of service I was getting from the
security service provider so I arranged a meeting with the owner.Now I liked this guy.When I first met him he drove a Ssangyong
Musso.After the expulsions of all the
expatriate security men and realizing that I had managed to hang on, he offered
me a very reasonable percentage of the contract value if I could swing the
international clients his way.We are
talking lots of million dollar contracts here.I did not hate him for that, it is after all, the standard approach here
in Angola and, I guess, elsewhere in the world.Everyone I had spoken to had offered me a similar deal.But there was something about him that I liked.I felt sure he could provide what I wanted.

‘I tell you
what,’ I said, ‘if you give me the ten percent you are offering me as a
reduction on the contract value instead, buy some new vehicles dedicated to us,
I’ll call it quits’.

‘Ah,’ he
said, the 'Maneira Inglés’

The English
Manner.Here, twenty years ago ‘The
English Manner’ amongst the Angolans was a synonym for ‘Honesty and
Integrity’.Not entirely sure what’s
happened to that since.

Anyway, I
was sitting in the guy’s office berating him about the reliability of his
response vehicles and the execrable English of his control room operators when
he asked me what flea was really chewing my nuts, so I told him.

He was very
angry with me.He called his secretary
in and ordered her to fetch someone else.While we waited, he continued to berate me.Why hadn’t I told him IMMEDIATELY!!!Didn’t I realize that this was SERIOUS?I could go down for TEN years!!!!

Ten is a
good round number.By this stage I was a
shadow of my former self.I wasn’t
eating and I was drinking far too much.Sleeping was something I remembered doing as a kid but clearly, in the
absence of my Teddy who, only known to me was an outstanding kick boxer and
could keep all demons at bay, I was having a few problems.

I was quite
depressed.Not least because everyone I
spoke to about this appeared evidently confident I was somehow responsible.While one should be grateful either way, for
various subtle reasons, there is a distinction between friends assuring you
that the charges are without foundation and will be disposed of accordingly,
and the attitude I found prevalent here suggesting ‘you’re a guilty bastard,
you old rogue but we have the connections to get you off’.They were going to get me off but on what
grounds?And at what cost?

Oh it
wasn’t the money.I’d have gladly
sacrificed anything material to protect my family but I was stuck between the
most ancient rocks of Africa and an even harder place.By accepting their help, knowing such a
course would flout due legal process, I was effectively conceding my guilt and
the debt I owed a system I despised.My
wife thought I was mad but as I tried to explain to her on the phone, I just
couldn’t do it.Had the Ministry of
Justice, looking at the evidence, decided there wasn’t a case to answer so it
did not need to go to trial, fine.But
they had told me that because I had failed to show for two summonses and was
now out on police bail, only a trial could provide closure.

‘OK’. I
told my mentor.‘I want to go to trial,
but, I want to answer the charges by myself’

Family and
face in Africa is very important.In a
lot of cases it causes what the rest of the world call corruption and they, the
Africans, see as merely obligation.I
say ‘merely’.Here it is a bloody
serious obligation.Often, the whole
family saves and clubs together just to send one family member to school.If he makes it, he doesn’t just earn just for
himself, he earns for a vast, extended family.It’s the way it works here.

Now, with a
very weak hand, I was going to play them at their own game.

‘I am the
head of my family’, I said.‘If any
member of my family commits a crime I, and I alone am responsible.If you want to help me, make sure I can
appear in court and answer singularly for my family and if there is any debt to
pay, I pay it.’

‘Are you
sure?’ he asked me.

‘Actually,
I am scared witless’, I told him, ‘but this is a matter of Honor.The whole thing is a crock of shit, what’s
the worst they can do to me, bang me up for a couple of years in Bentiaba?’

‘Ten years’
he said.

‘For a
Nissan engine?’ I replied.

His man
came in.He tossed him the file and
said, ‘Go to the Ministry of Justice, identify the process and have the girl’s
name removed from it’.

He turned
back to me.‘Seriously, that’s all you
want?’

’Look at it
this way,’ I said, ‘She is Angolan.If
she has a criminal record, she is stuffed.If I go down, I’ll spend a bit of time inside and then they’ll expel me,
you know that.I’ll go off and work
somewhere else, she’ll get the house in Maianga and we’ll meet up anytime we
want in Cape Town, so what’s the big deal?I want the right to face the court and defend myself.’

This guy
does not drink, he doesn’t smoke and he certainly does not use the Lord’s name
in vain but I could have sworn I heard him say, ‘Fuck Me’.

I had
appealed to African law and they agreed.As Head of the Family, I argued, I answer for my Family so at the
appointed hour I appeared, was duly re-arrested, finger printed and manacled.I wasn’t entirely happy (largely because they
confiscated my hip flask and fags) but I knew it was me and me alone that was
standing there and not the mother of my boy.She and the boy were safe in Cape Town, probably eating waffles with ice
cream in Cavendish Square for all I knew but they were safe and that was good
enough for me.

It is
difficult for me to make an accurate comparison between a UK court room and an
Angolan courtroom from the client’s point of view.Many times I have been called as an ‘Expert
Witness’ to Crown Courts in UK but I just answered the questions posed to me
with absolute honesty (once much to the obvious frustration of the prosecution,
I was only ever a witness for the prosecution, but what these buggers failed to
appreciate is that our job, as they reminded us as we took the stand, was to
tell the truth) and avoided looking at the guy in the dock.I noticed enough, however, to recall that
there was a dock, a place for a man to sit, a rail for him to lean on.But I never experienced it from the peculiar
perspective of a man facing a beak.

What I got
in Angola was a box.Not a box to sit in
but a small box to sit on.With my arms
manacled behind my back, like I was some sort of axe murderer, in the middle of
the floor.

Trials of
any kind tend to be a bit of a draw for those dismally bereft of anything
vaguely recognizable as a life in any country but I have to confess that a
chained up white man in Africa was justifiably quite a draw so I could excuse
the factthe courtroom was packed.Sadly, because of the resultant heat, I was
sweating like a rapist and feared such obvious discomfort hardly stood me in
good stead.Bereft of a lawyer, they had
trawled the local kindergartens until they found someone who could, as near as
dammit, tie his own shoe laces.Seeing
him sweating more than I was, I felt marginally reassured.By this stage, dear reader, one should
understand that I was beyond suicidal and, being already dead, was merely a
dispassionate observer.Not so dead or
dispassionate to fail to recognize that handcuffs are jolly uncomfortable.I can handle the pain, don’t get me wrong,
but at my age, if you have to go, you have to go so you end up shouting at your
minders offering them the choice of unzipping the flies, reaching into the Y
Fronts and grabbing the tackle to point it in the right direction or releasing
the damn cuffs.They cracked first time.This is a Man thing.Heterosexual or gay, no man wants to swamp
his trousers in court and even jailors understand this.

I had
passed over my carefully compiled defence file with notarized translations into
Portuguese from both the German and British Embassies as required and all
supporting evidence.The car as sold was
as it left the factory, just with a few more miles on it.This would all be over in five minutes.

It took a
week.

The
judgement, when it was finally delivered to the hollow eyed suicide risk sat on
a box in the middle of the courtroom was simple.

I was not
guilty because, as the Judge pointed out to remind those present that he was
Wordly wise and had travelled abroad, it is common practice to swap out a bust
engine for a serviceable replacement from the same manufacturer.

‘BUT IT’S
THE SAME FUCKING ENGINE!’ I wanted to scream.

This all
started off costing me eight grand for a car.My first wife sold it in on credit with a deposit of two grand and never
collected the rest.The car when we got
it back was not worth it so I was down six grand.The guy took us to court to get his two grand
back.I paid seven and a half grand
defending myself and although pronounced not guilty, I was not awarded costs.When I rang my wife and told her she could
relax, it was all over and it was safe for here to visit Angola again she told
me that she hadn’t been worried because she knew I would find a way around it.

Now,
accused of attempted murder and sitting there in that Jango, on a plastic garden chair this time instead of a
box, the Community Court judges in front of me and the hostile family of my
‘victim’ surrounding me, I was having a bit of a Déjà vu.

All the
prosecution witnesses, and there were many, had their say.It took ages.Each knew they had the floor to themselves and an enraptured audience.There was a brief pause while one of the
witnesses composed herself, the memory of such brutality on my part having
clearly upset her so, Carpe Diem; I asked the judge if they had any drinking
water.He told me they did and ordered
proceedings to continue.I lit another
cigarette which immediately glued itself to parched lips.

One
‘witness’, Toto, berated me at length.He invited me to imagine what the likely outcome would have been if the
whole village had retaliated by attacking me and my family?‘After all’, he pointed out, ‘it is just you,
your wife, and a boy. We are many!’he
shouted threateningly pointing his finger directly at me.He then went on to say that I was thoroughly
unjustified to attack a lonely citizen when we, meaning, I suppose me, Marcia
and Alex, outnumbered them.Them?Oh yes, I remember, the guy that attacked my
wife had two other guys with him although, to be fair, they did fuck off pretty
sharpish once I started swinging the ashtray.It says a lot
for African wife beating men that they consider three of them against one old white
man, his four year old son and young wife as being unfairly outnumbered.Consider this, though, if there were so many
witnesses present in the Community Court, all of them sympathetic to and
testifying in favour of the plaintiff, just exactly how outnumbered were they
in my Jango that fateful night?As
outnumbered as I felt right there and then in their court?Of all the witnesses who had a go at me, I
was most surprised at Toto.He was the
one that witnessed Marcia paying over the money for the disputed land that
everyone now denies was ever paid but I guess he was just having a go at me
because, as he subsequently claimed, I once attempted to kill him.Actually, all I did was grab him around the
neck and put him to sleep for a while because he was beating his wife to death
in front of Marcia’s shop.As I said to
him when he woke up, do you what you like to her in your own home but you can’t
smack a woman like that on my property.

We weren’t
the only people in my Jango when the trouble started, but rather as I expected,
none of them were present now to speak up on my behalf.Not surprising really, they were all women so
they don’t count here and they know damn well that careless words cost lives.Or at least earn you a good hiding.Joaquim, who is widely accepted as male was
present but, if they were stamping medals for cowardice, he would get the
equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

Everyone
having made themselves hoarse shouting at me, the Committee then moved onto the
reason for the argument, the question of the disputed payment.The plaintiff’s bank statements, stained with
blood as I noticed with intense gratification, were produced.

Still I
kept my parched mouth shut.

These were
waved around as evidence of Marcia’s fraudulent attempt to rob this honest
citizen of forty one dollars and my complicity in this terrible crime by
striking down this honest citizen when he, with all due respect and courtesy
had attempted to secure his honest due.

That was
when Marcia spoke.

I thought
she was going to go nuts.She had been
tense for a long time and as an ex bomb disposal officer, I really knew just
how terrible it could be if she exploded in such a confined space.

‘Look at
the date of the Bank Statement’ was all she said.

There was a
big huddle as they all got together.They muttered amongst themselves for ages but then finally had to agree
that the statement they were holding in their hands, all three pages of it, was
dated 2012.

Composing
themselves, the Committee declared that the issue of the contested payment was
neither here nor there and would, henceforth, be ignored but there was still
the matter of me assaulting a citizen.

Finally, I
got my chance to speak.I looked over at
Marcia because she had begged me to really, really try as hard as I could to
keep my mouth shut.I got the green
light from her.

I stood up.

‘I am not
fully aware of the reasons for the original confusion’, I said before pausing
in the best Shakespearian manner, ‘but if any man enters MY house and assaults
MY wife ( I paused again), I WILL kill him or die trying.’

‘Furthermore’,
I continued, ‘Which man among you would respect me, a husband for not having
defended his wife in his own house and which woman among you would not spit on
my shadow for allowing her to be beaten by a Gatuno?’

Gatuno is a
very inflammatory word.It’s marvelous.It’s a wonderful mix of Cunt and Bandit.

And then I
sat down, lit yet another cigarette and glanced over to Marcia who was holding
her head in her hands.C’mon, after four
hours I was gagging for a drink. There was Fuck all I could say that would make
any difference and I was certainly not going to crawl.

There was
uproar.The family of the victim went
mad.They don’t issue the Judges of a
Community Court gavels so he banged his fist on the table to restore order.A few were violently expelled which meant a
break in the proceedings while the blood was mopped up from the floor.I sat tight and finished my fag.

Order
restored, the Judge summed up.Did I not
realize that the Angolan Government was, after decades of civil war trying to
re-establish order?After twenty years
here was I still unaware of the mechanisms through which an honest citizen
could derive legal redress?And so it
went on.Apparently, seeing someone
attacking my wife, I should have strolled down the road to the Coordinator’s
house, got him out of bed and asked him to come back to my place and intervene
on our behalf, presumably arriving just in time to take my wife to hospital,
assuming it was still worth the effort.

I just let
it all wash over me.They knew the guy I
hit was a git; he couldn’t prove a debit on his account in Marcia’s favour, it
was all a load of bollocks. I’d smacked
the guy with an ashtray, a crime I freely admitted so I was going to go
down.So what?A partisan crowd was baying for blood.Let ’em fucking have it.After twenty years in this shit hole, I’d had
enough.I drifted off back to a nice place,
Belize.I was twenty five years old and shagging
the Mexican Ambassador’s girlfriend on the end of a jetty on St George’s Caye
with Hazel O’Conner’s ‘Will You’ oozing out of the speakers when her sister
surprised us and I died a thousand deaths of embarrassment until she invited
her sister to slide in alongside us.I
was in paradise… it was amazing… and
then together the pair of them…

Marcia
nudged me in the ribs.

‘Pay
attention, they’re delivering the verdict’

The Judge
rose from his chair and the jango fell silent.

‘Sr Tomas’.

His pause
was miles better than mine as he prepared to pass Judgement:

I would
urge you to follow the author’s instructions and read it from the
beginning.I stopped after the rather
harrowing description of the miserable death of a once fine man, a productive
individual and loving father.

I emailed
John Gray and asked his advice.He said
what I really needed to do was check myself into a residential rehabilitation
clinic.

I emailed
my brother and asked him, since he is in Germany blessed with a superb internet
connection, functional telephones and something called ‘Common Sense’, to look
into it for me.

What I
imagined was Stalag Luft XIV. I would be
taken there in a truck and dumped into the icy slush of the courtyard, German Shepherds
straining at the ends of their leashes to get a chunk of me.Detoxification would consist of being chained
to a wall in the Cooler.Every time I
reached for my once daily bowl of gruel would see a jackboot crushing down on
my already well smashed knuckles.If I
was lucky and the shackles allowed, I would be able to catch and munch down on
a cockroach.

The reality
appears to be somewhat different.It is
all terribly ‘Touchy Feely’.I was
willing to pay several thousand pounds a week to have the shit kicked out of
me.I know there’s not a single city in
UK where with a few well aimed waspish comments I couldn’t get that for free at
closing time but I think you know what I mean.I pictured an institution not too dissimilar to Dartmoor Prison in a
permanent state of winter.Rather than
the gentle tap on my bedroom door announcing the arrival of my breakfast at the
not unreasonable hour of Ten, I expected Jackbooted guards running their batons
along the bars of my cell shouting, ‘RAUS! RAUS! APPEL!’ at Oh My God
Hours.I expected freezing cold showers,
hard labour and nothing but contempt from not just deeply unsympathetic but
sadistic bastards.I expected the
psychiatrist to be Stasi trained; instead of a couch I would be manacled to a
rough wooden chair with a lamp pointing in my face and be beaten with a rubber
hose if I gave ‘ze wrong’ answer.

Recognizing
that I really needed a boot camp (or maximum security prison) rather than a
humane environment, my brother came up with a place in Scotland.Scotland!Excellent!Nothing could surpass
the bible bashing flying spittle of an ardent Presbyterian condemning my soul
to the fires of everlasting, all-consuming hell unless I repented.Porridge with salt.Being head butted in the showers.Digging peat for the whisky stills in the
pouring rain. Losing at Rugby in the pouring rain.Having my chest caved in by a still animate
tonne of Anglophobic Scottish beef in the pouring rain. There'll be a gnashing, A GNASHING of anguished teeth. But Father, I haven't got any teeth. TEETH WILL BE PROVIDED!!!!Perfect.

So I wrote
to the Clinic explaining that I wasn’t really into knitting yoghurt and hugging
trees and for their fee of 3,450 English (I mean Scottish) pounds per week I
expected a jolly good thrashing.I summarized
my email to them thus:

"So,

Do you have an evil Sergeant
Major who will personally dig a highly polished toe cap into my ribs at six in
the morning to toss me out of bed?

Do you have an occupational
therapy programme that includes digging soil from one part of the garden,
transporting it to the other side and then for no discernable reason
whatsoever, transporting it back again?

Are your staff allowed to give
lazy and uncooperative inmates a jolly good kick up the arse?

If inmates stray within twenty
feet of your security fence in search of distilled grain and cross the wire,
can your guards open fire?

Will I be absolved if in twenty years’
time I am accused of pinching a nurse’s bum?

If the answers to all these are
'Yes', please sign me up.

My Angolan wife is hugely
supportive. I showed her the costs and she patted me on the back and
said, 'Go for it my Darling. As you are British, if you die here in
Angola we would have to pay to repatriate your body to England by air and that
would be far more expensive'.

The clinic
replied.Apparently I am not an
Alcoholic, I have a Dependency.This is
not an Addiction, it is an Illness.

B

ollocks.No-one forced this stuff down my neck, I did
it all to myself.This is a self-inflicted
wound but I do recognize, now that I am addicted
and lack the moral fibre to sort it
out myself, I need help.The major part
of the programmes offered by private clinics (yes, I have to go private)
comprises of Psychoanalogy, the main aim of which is to define, and then help
the inmate come to terms with the reason he or she is drinking.

Well that’s
an easy bleeding question to answer.I
drank because I liked the taste and I can’t wait for God to come out with a
Mark II liver that’s a bit better than the useless one he issued me and everyone
else so that we can all drink twice as much and help the government
balance its books.

The rest of
the time seems to be taken up with Group Therapy.My God, if ever there was a hell on earth it
is listening to other wasters describing their miserable lives and how they
were buggered by their Maths' teacher as kid which turned them into mass
murdering drug addicts.With these guys
it is always someone else’s fault.No,
if I were to open one of these meetings it would be with, ‘Let’s get one thing
straight, we are ALL worthless shits.The idea of this programme is to see just how much of it is worth recycling’.

So I was
pleased to receive a list of the activities included in their ‘Complimentary
Occupational Therapy Programme’ which I have appended below.I also accept that their ‘Clients’ are not ‘Inmates’
but ‘Patients’. Pedantic Celts.I have
added my comments, which I kid you not I sent to them (along with a plea for them to add fly fishing, riding, clay pigeon shooting, chopping trees down and cooking lessons), beneath each activity:

Art Group

Wonderful, maybe I'll churn out a Hockney, recover the
fees and get a dinner invitation from Cro Magnum, the most powerful paintbrush in France, or maybe even the Fifth Communist (I read recently in the Telegraph, Columnist,
that some old guy, ex journalist, is still looking for you, by the way.Just deny you ever went to Cambridge and I
reckon you’ll be OK)

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Hyper-barbaric Oxygen Therapy?People pay to lie around in an oxygen tent?Doesn't sound too H O T to me.Can I have a fag while undergoing the
treatment?

Equine Assisted Therapy

So they let me, a man who has ridden to hounds on the Quorn
and rode over the Vaca Plateau in Central America in search of ancient Mayan
ruins, lead a donkey to water and then make me sit together with all the other whacked
out donkey wallopers and explain what the experience of being close to a donkey
and leading it to water meant to me?Does the expression, 'I seriously need a drink' spring to mind?

Drumming Therapy

We can all sit in supervised a circle on the lawn and
beat a drum?After an overdose of oxygen
and leading an ambulant Findus lasagne to water with no alcohol to numb the
senses, I'd be drumming someone's head alright.

Acupuncture

'Please, I can't stand this place anymore!Stick the needles into my eyes!No! Deeper!You have to spear the Cerebral Cortex!’

Mindfulness Meditation

Mind Fullness?What the f*** are they on about?I saw those Master/Grasshopper movies, I thought the idea of meditation
was to EMPTY the mind…I still can’t
walk on rice paper without screwing it up, by the way.

Thai Massage

OK, THAT I
am into.It had crossed my mind that
after six weeks incarceration without Marcia I would have bollocks the size of
static water tanks, be walking like John Wayne and parting herds of donkey's
like Moses did the Red Sea.Maybe I’ll
go for some more HOT treatment so I can keep my end of the deal up.If the Thais aren’t up for it at least the
bloody donkeys will be too scared to come near me.

Aromatherapy

Sniff.'Ye-es,
I think that's a 25 year old Glenfarclas and' sniff, 'this is a Laphroig, I can
smell the peat'.Can I drink them now?

Relaxation Therapy

Relaxation Therapy?I call it 'sleeping' or to give it its technical name, 'Egyptian PT'.

'Don't forget to pour me my nightcap and fluff up the
pillows before you go, there's a good chap.Oh, one other thing Old Boy, tell all these other muttering oiks lying
on rubber mats on the floor to piss off and, you see that guy in white pajamas
up front going, OM, OM, OM?Just shoot
him for me, will you'

Dance

I prefer the targeted
Acupuncture unless ‘Dance’ means watching naked polish pole dancers.In which case, maintaining the spirit of the
occasion, I would drink only Vodka.Chilled, of course.

I finished off by telling
them that I really wanted to do this.

AND THEY REPLIED!!!

Before they start the
admissions procedure, though, they want my telephone number so that their resident
psychiatrist can have chat with me first.

Tomorrow I face the public tribunal for wilfully and maliciously bashing an ashtray, itself a relic of war, into the head of a poor Angolan citizen with intent to kill, after first having stunned him with a one two combination breaking my left hand in the process, The lattter being the meat of the initial confrontation forming the assault charges just in case they don't get me for attempted murder..

Well of course I am guilty. Mind you, if the bastard had gone down with the first combination I wouldn't have had to hit him with the ashtray so wouldn't now be facing the 'with intent to kill' bit which, as my lawyer says, is a bit of a nuisance. Well I will bear that in mind next time I am defending my wife from an apparently homicidal maniac. Sadly, I am used to lawyer speak and 'bit of a nuisance' translates into 'doomed'.

I was actually naive enough to ask Marcia if my presence at the tribunal was actually neceesary. Why couldn't I just sit there in my room, small pack containing everything I would need in prison; a few undies, a big jar of Vaseline, condoms etc. and wait for the decision? Whichever way you looked at it, I was buggered. Was there any chance I could save myself the public humiliation?

Marcia wasn't having any of that. Apparently the Big Guns are coming tomorrow. Cheery news indeed but tomorrow is Saturday. Those wishing to see me dance a jig at the end of a rope have a vested interest in pitching out of bed. Will the big guns, right at this very minute getting slammed out of their heads in downtown Luanda remember that ever so teensy weeny and insignificant appointment they may have agreed seventy kilometres south of bed spaces filled with willing whores? I think not. As plans go, Marcia's was brilliant. Except that it is total Bollocks.

So we are going to Plan B.

First thing in the morning a few loyal retainers are going hose me down and turn me from this:

Thursday, 14 February 2013

The writing of this post was interrupted by the fight at Fat Hippo's OK Corral so is a fraction out of date and too late now for Big Don 'Mad' Kev Alviti's Valentine's Day Dinner. Still, I promised to give him the recipe for German Red Cabbage and then, as usual, I went overboard a bit.
﻿

A little
while back Big Don ‘Mad’ Kev Alviti posted an excellent recipe for pheasant
having landed a brace or two demonstrating that at heart he was more a family
man than the ruthless underboss of a powerful family.He also asked if any of his readers had other
recipes for pheasant so I posted a comment detailing the way I cook Guinea Fowl
which are, I suppose, Africa’s pheasants.I suggested he served the dish with German style red cabbage, spaetzle
and cucumber dill salad.

This is Sauerbraten (a marinaded roast beef) with Spaetzle and Red Cabbage.
The dish will look something like this but, delete the beef
and exchange it for the Guinea Fowl/Pheasant in the picture below:

He seemed
pleased but wanted to know how to make German style red cabbage.I think German cuisine is much maligned and
definitely hovers in the shadow of its culinary powerful neighbor France in
much the same way as good, honest English food does.I would be hard pushed to state categorically
which my favorite dish was but I can say categorically that it would not be
French.I have no desire to upset any of
my French readers.You are the world’s
epicures.Most of the lexicon of
culinary terminology is derived from your language, a language also highly
regarded for its power to seduce women, so I think the French cottoned on to
the idea ages ago that most living creatures on Earth are motivated by instincts
to survive and procreate so why not do it stylishly.And so the French fashion industry was born,
Citroen and Facel Vega made barking mad cars, Brigitte Bardot proved that God
was having a really good day when he made Woman and every Chef the world over
strives for a Michelin star.

If I had to
choose one English dish, honey glazed roast pork with roast potatoes and
parsnips, boiled cabbage and parsley sauce would be right up there.The German dish would be any Wild Gericht,
(wild boar, venison) in a creamy mushroom sauce served with red cabbage and
spaetzle, the German pasta and it was the latter I suggested to Big Don Alviti
since we were dealing with pheasant.

Naturally I
wanted to reply and explain how one prepares red cabbage German style but then
I realized that we are so close to Valentine’s Day, a significant anniversary
for families like the Alvitis so, I thought, why not go the whole hog and do a
St Valentine’s Day Massacre Menu?

As a
result, this is a long post and since I have never photographed the dishes I
describe in the past, all the photos you see have been culled from the interweb
thingy but I will correct that when I prepare all this for Marcia in a few days
time.

First, the
recipe I suggested to Big Don Kev for pheasant a few days ago:

This is how
I prepare Guinea Fowl so it will work well with pheasant. It works with chicken
and duck too.

Portion the birds and place in a glass bowl. Add a couple of bay leaves,
roughly chopped onion, carrots, pepper corns, juniper berries, a few whole
cloves and cover with red wine. Cover and leave overnight in a cool place (we
have to stick it in the fridge in Angola).

Next day, brown the portions of bird off on high heat in a bit of olive oil in
a cast iron casserole. Add a couple of tablespoons of flour to the sizzling
birds, give it a good stir around and then add the strained liquid from the
marinade. Best to do it gradually while stirring gently so that the wine
combines with the flour and juices.

Strain a jar of pickled pearl onions (the really small ones) and place them in
another heavy based pan, add brown sugar, a tablespoon, and caramelize. Don’t
burn it, keep it all moving, and then add that to the birds.

Add wild mushrooms, can be dry but the heavier the flavor the better (button
mushrooms are a bit bland), and a chopped up big chunk of smoked bacon (not the
water injected sliced stuff you get in vacuum sealed packets) and also a pinch
of black pepper.

Let this simmer gently for an hour or two. Check every now and then to see it
isn’t burning on the bottom of the pan but be careful not to knock the flesh
apart. Add chicken stock to prevent the sauce over thickening and burning and,
towards the end, check seasoning. They like lots of salt here but you may get
enough out of the bacon for your taste. If not, add a pinch or so to taste.
Then take it off the heat and let it settle. Before serving, add cream to the
sauce which by now should be thick as gravy.

I have never used a ‘Crock Pot’ but I imagine such a device would be ideal once
you have assembled all the ingredients into one pot. As I have already said,
this works with chicken as well but you get the best flavor if you use the
genuine free range ones that are tougher than the farmed varieties.

This dish is best served with red cabbage (cooked German style), German
Spaetzle (to soak up the sauce) and a cucumber dill cream side salad.

That was
the end of my original comment.So now,
just for Big Don Kev, here is the rest…

Red
Cabbage, German style (well, my style anyway!)

Chop up one
large onion, place in a big heavy pan with a bit of goose fat or beef or pork
dripping (or olive oil) and fry them off until they are clear and slither about
the pan.You can caramelize them
slightly but don’t let them burn!Burning ingredients brings many forms of bitterness;in your heart when you look inside the pan
and say, ‘Shit! I’ve burnt them, now I have to start again’; for the flavor of
the dish and finally, for your family who eat it and think to themselves, ‘I
wish Mum had cooked tonight’.So don’t
burn anything!

Peel and thinly
slice a couple of tart apples (coring them first obviously) and chuck them in.

Slice a red
cabbage up into thin ribbons discarding the heavy white core and chuck them
in.Give it all a stir and then add a
bloody good slosh of wine vinegar, about half a whisky glass full, give it
another stir and bang the lid on the pan to let the lot steam for a couple of
minutes.

Add a bay
leaf, a few whole cloves, a few pinches of salt, a heaped teaspoon full of
brown sugar and a loaded tablespoon full of thick plum or damson jam, the stuff
that looks brown rather than artificially purple.The Germans call that jam Pflaumenmus and
instead of being gelatinous like ordinary jams, it resembles the slurry oozing
out of a Russian industrial estate but believe me, it is fantastic.I am sure you must be able to get it in UK by
now.If not, go for any fruit rich plum
or damson jam.If it is homemade, even
if it is runny, so much the better.

Beef stock
or wine?

Now you
have a choice and I know my dear old Granny (yes, I am in my mid-fifties and my
German Granny is, thankfully, still alive) would argue with me on this but,
bear with me while I explain.This stuff
has to simmer for at least a couple of hours so the liquid we have added so far
will not be enough.There are those,
curiously putting their health before culinary happiness, who say you should
now add plain water.What a load of
tosh.There are those, my dear Granny
included, who say we should add white wine.Granny, my darling Granny, matriarch of the Von Borken family, we have
wine vinegar in there, why do we need to add only wine?Naturally, when I am in Baden-Baden and in
her kitchen, I do it her way but when I am beyond her stern gaze, I add beef
stock and only a dash of wine.This red
cabbage is served as an accompaniment to rich game so we need to give it some
legs so it can punch the diner’s tonsils on the way down.So I would suggest keeping the mixture
simmering in beef stock, adding maybe another dash of wine vinegar an hour into
the process.For the beef stock, the real stuff is of
course best but an OXO cube dissolved into a litre of water is fine, you’ll
probably only need half the stock anyway so you are not going to over flavor
it.Knorr is rubbish, by the way.

For the
last half hour, you want the liquid to reduce so you need to keep an eye on the
pan stirring it occasionally because IT MUST NOT BURN!

Once it is
no longer sloppy and with a wooden spoon you can extract a real heaped spoonful
, turn off the heat, bang the lid on again so it can rest and finish off the
other dishes.

I realize
that if you want to do your Pheasant/Guinea Fowl/Wild Chicken with Rotkohl and
Spaetzle you will need to be around to rattle the pans for a couple of hours
but believe me, with practice, you can do all that and in the meantime mow the
lawn, install a new loft hatch and service the truck. Oh and wash the pans, of
course.All before the wife gets home.

It is nearly Valentine’s day so if you are up for the
Pheasant dish and the red cabbage, just buy the Spaetzle, I am certain it’s
available in any decent delicatessen and all you have to do is cook it like
pasta.It is, though, incredibly easy to
make but you really need one of these, a spaetzle press:

A lot of people hate doing things manually, they want to see an On Off button but this is so easy

It is also
good for ricing potatoes and squeezing the water out of soaked socks so they
dry quicker on the radiator.The socks,
not the potatoes.

Dominic has
been making himself spaetzle with my press since he was nine.He has it for breakfast frying up chopped
bacon and mushrooms in a pan with loads of butter and then adding the spaetzle.

Now you
need an entrée.Buy a bag of frozen King
Prawns (like if you want to go crazy Big Don, buy lobster tails), let them thaw
out and peel them.Buy some really
crispy lettuce, a few cherry tomatoes, some celery and some ripe Avocados.Now you need some Heinz Salad Cream, Tomato
Ketchup and some Tabasco Sauce.Beat up
in a bowl (sorry about all the washing up) a 50:50 mix of salad cream and
tomato sauce.Add a few drops of Tabasco
(we don’t want ‘Burning Bum By Morning’ but we do need a little piquancy), salt
and pepper, give it all a stir and place to one side.I am surrounded by ravenous dogs so ‘placing
to one side’ for me means higher than they can jump.Shred the lettuce and make a bed of it on a
large flat plate.Don’t go mad, Mad Big
Don, this is just a garnish, we’re not disguising a grave with vegetation
here.If the prawns/lobster tails are
from a reputable source, such as Findus, then place them in a colander, boil up
a kettle of water and blanche them to remove any trace of equine DNA before
sticking them in the fridge to chill.If
they are from your local EU unlicensed fishmonger then they are likely to be
raw and unlikely to be anything else other than prawns or lobster tails so just
steam them in a colander over a pan of hot water with a bit of chopped garlic,
onion and wine for a few minutes and then chill them in the fridge.

Don’t be
tempted to slice into the avocados until moments before you assemble the dish
unless you really hate your guests.There are many ways of testing the quality of an avocado (poking the
end, squeezing it) but I subscribe to the John Gray method.I realize Scotch Eggs do not grow on trees
but they are more or less the same shape and scoffing a couple on the way home
is a sure fire guarantee of quality so remember to buy a couple extra.I can go through Avocados at the rate of
about one every ten miles, if I am driving, more if I am the passenger.

Slice a
couple of the cherry tomatoes into as thin strips as you can.Slice four inch sticks of celery into as thin
strips as you can.

Shit, I
forgot the Mangos.Peel a ripe Mango and
slice the flesh off.It is always easier
to peel just a bit of the skin off, slice the exposed flesh and then peel it a
bit more and so on.Peeling the whole
thing and then trying to slice it makes the flesh mushy.

Bollocks, I
forgot the fresh coriander leaves as well.Seriously, I am rubbish at writing about cooking but stick me in front
of the pans…

So nip back
to the supermarket and buy a bunch of fresh coriander leaves.

When you
get back, give everything a stir to make sure it isn’t BURNING and then chop
some of the coriander up finely.

Peel the
avocado.This is dead easy.Just attack it with a knife.I usually kill them cleanly by quickly
slicing them in half and giving them a twist so the big brain in the middle
falls out.Peel the skin off and then
slice them lengthways but not quite to the end.This way, pressing a hand down on top of them causes their earthly remains
to spread out in a wonderful fan.Slide
a Chef’s knife or spatula underneath and lift this onto the restrained bed of
crunchy lettuce. Squeeze a few drops of
lemon juice over the avocado.On top of this lay a few slices, we are
talking no more than two or three wafer thin segments here, of mango.Now assemble the prawn/lobster tail on top.Over this sprinkle just the tiniest hint of
the chopped fresh coriander leaves.Then
as artistically as clumsy fingers allow, spread some of the salad cream/tomato
sauce mixture over the pile.A good
dollup.Don’t be shy but bear in mind, your
guests are interested in what they are about to eat so while they are thanking
God for what they are about to receive, they may also be grateful for a glimpse
of steamed crustacean so they recognize what they are about to receive.

Toss the
celery and tomato in a bowl to mix them up but not beat them into submission and
then add a small multi-coloured bird’s nest of finely sliced celery with a hint,
a mere smidgin ofthe finely sliced tomato
on top.Crown this with the tiniest,
thinnest slice of Mango and a few larger coriander leaves.

So we have
sorted the Entrée out.You know how to
prepare your pheasant/chicken/Guinea Fowl, the German style red cabbage and you
are going to buy ready-made Spaetzle (like most Germans do) so now we are just
missing the side salad and a dessert.

I have
maids which makes it easy for me.I
honestly hope you have a dishwasher because we need more bowls.

Peel and
thinly slice a couple of cucumbers.Lay
the slices out in a bowl and finely sprinkle a bit of salt over each
layer.Do not go overboard Big Don Mad
Alviti, just the very lightest dusting.Think where the Boss says, ‘Give him a good kicking but don’t kill
him’.I know once you have a loaded
packet of salt in your hand it is hard, but this time we need subtle.

Stick the
bowl in the fridge and forget about it for an hour or so.

Where I
live, Big Don A, I can only buy UHT cream which tends to come out of the packet
as a stream of water followed by disgusting lumps which needs a good hiding
with a whisk to get it looking half normal.I am sure where you are, you can buy really nice fresh cream.Buy some of that, give 250 mls or so a little
stir in yet another bowl (you run out of bowls yet?) and mix in some finely
chopped fresh dill, at least two tablespoons full.If you have left the cucumber for a couple of
hours you will find it is swamped in salty water.Drain the salty water off and add the cream
and dill, stir it up and stick it back in the fridge.This will be your palate cleansing side
salad.

Apart from
the pheasants which you had to go out and shoot, everything I have mentioned in
this Valentine’s menu is available in a supermarket so let’s keep up the
momentum and talk about dessert.

Buy a big
tin of peach halves in syrup and a normal sized can of pitted black cherries. If you can't get tinned pitted black cherries, no matter, just warn everyone and provide a small plate for the spits, I mean pits.

Open the
tins but only pour out the syrup into a heavy based pan (more washing and
scrubbing I know).If you have one,
chuck in a sliced vanilla pod.Also add
a small piece of cinnamon bark and a clove and reduce the liquid to about a
quarter of the volume.Then remove the whole
spices.The juice should be quite
syrupy. Add the peach halves and black cherries and fry them up.You will need to gently flip the peach halves
over a few times.DON’T BURN THEM!

You could, and
I urge you to try, flambé them at the table in front of a startled audience but
I have found that while my sons are delighted by my theatrical extravagance, my
wife is more concerned about our thatched roof.If your wife feels the same way as mine, call the kids through to the
kitchen on the pretext of collecting the plates and eating irons to lay the
table, slosh in the Cointreau or Cognac and let rip.It is a bonding experience when the kids rush
back into the lounge shouting gleefully, ‘Mummy, Mummy! Dad’s just burnt his
eyebrows off and had to put his head in the washing up bowl!It was EVER so funny!’

Covered in
Vanilla ice cream and the rest of the whipped fresh cream, this makes an
excellent dessert.

Bon Appetit Monsieur Big Don 'Mad' Kev Alviti!

Go on, admit it. How many of you having read my last post saw the title of this one and thought, shit, it's turned into a shoot out at Fat Hippo's?

Search Blogger

Hippo

My other blog

The boring bit

I first came to Africa in the early 90's, supposedly for one year. Six months in Mozambique followed by six months in Angola and then home again. Over 20 years later, I am still here.
I have gone where the jobs were, in mine clearance, security, the oil industry, anything that would put bread on the table. I have a farm in southern Angola and am building a lovely restaurant and hotel on the banks of the Rio Kwanza where the river spills into the Atlantic ocean. I am 55 years old, have two sons aged 16 and 6, a longtime girlfriend 21 years my junior, three dogs and a fine goose which we keep meaning to eat at Christmas but somehow never do.